HAS
ANYBODY SEEN
THE "FAR LEFT"?
Newspaper
headlines
announcing the FPO victory invariably describe the party
as representative of the "Far Right." Naturally,
the election victories of the rehabilitated Communist parties
in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe are never referred
to as victories of the Far Left. The exact meaning of this
"Far Right" category seems to describe a single
position taken by the FPO: opposition to increased immigration
– a majority view not only in Austria but also in these
United States of America. Does this make us a nation of Nazis?
THE
USES OF HITLER
What
would our rulers do without the image and memory of Hitler?
Whenever they want to demonize someone, whether a foreign
potentate or a domestic enemy, they drag out the Hitler imagery
and have a good go at him: Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan
Milosevic, smalltime hoodlums all, were blown up to larger
than life proportions by the ridiculous comparison to the
demonic conqueror of Europe whose name is a synonym for pure
evil. On this level of Hitler-mongering, the international
level, the charge is empty, and formalistic, all form and
no content; applied to, say, Saddam Hussein, it is meant as
a signal, a threat that the West intends to destroy him and
occupy his country. When they start calling another head of
state a "Hitler," it is time for that unfortunate
ruler to retire to his bombproof bunker.
THE
HUNT FOR HITLERISM ON THE HOME FRONT
As
an ideological weapon on the domestic front, the hunt for
Hitlerians goes into overdrive whenever the elites want to
slap their populist opponents down, whether on the right or
the unconventional left. For citing the works of revisionist
historians such as William Henry Chamberlain, A. J. P. Taylor,
and a host of others, and suggesting that U.S. entry into
two world wars could have been avoided, Patrick J. Buchanan
is the latest victim of the Hitler hysteria. As his book,
A
Republic, Not an Empire, rockets to 13th place on
the New York Times bestseller list next week, a mob
of book-burners from the right as well as the left are eager
to brand him with the mark of the swastika. I have covered
this topic extensively over the past few weeks, but the controversy
shows no signs of dying down: the War Party propaganda machine
doesn't seem to have an "off" button. Yes, and that's
right: neither do I. (Uh oh, you are thinking, here he goes
again . . . but wait, this is a new (and hysterically
funny) angle on what I admit is an old story.
UNINTENTIONAL
HUMOR IS ALWAYS THE BEST KIND
Not
there is anything new in these attacks – it is merely
an orgy of name-calling vituperation. The hysterical tone
underscores the panic of the elites as the myths that have
sustained their regime are challenged – and found wanting.
What is interesting is the stupidity and apparently unlimited
resources of the "Get Buchanan" crusade: a combination
that produces some of the best examples of unintentional hilarity
known to man.
A
HYMN TO HATE
In
addition to the assault of the united punditocracy –
including Lightweight Limbaugh, the GOP Establishment's inflated
hot air balloon – a slick and well-funded hate campaign
is underway, which made a splash in yesterday's print edition
of the New York Times: It was a quarter page ad on
the op ed page: A photo of Der Fuehrer, with the screaming
headline "Hitler's plan to attack America – Take
a look, Pat Buchanan." The text was a veritable hymn
of hate directed not only against Buchanan, but also (incredibly)
at John McLaughlin, the talk-show host of The McLaughlin
Group, who is described in the ad as one of "Pat's
blustering buddies" – as if lovable old John, an
ex-priest and certainly no National Socialist, was some kind
of swaggering Brownshirt! This is really going too far. The
ad copy continues: "It if wasn't so scary we might be
laughing." You can say that again, brother! Except,
for some reason, I am laughing – but, then, there's
no denying my decidedly mordant sense of humor.
SLICK
AS SNOT
The
whole point of the ad, aside from smearing Pat with the usual
mud, is to lure us to their slick-as-snot website, pretentiously
named TomPaine.com,
"a Journal of Opinion," which purports to stand
for "common sense." The site, which claims to be
nonpartisan, features a whole compendium of articles denouncing
Buchanan which all read as if they were written by the same
person. Which is not to say that these articles were not written
by the five or six decidedly unfamous – indeed,
virtually unknown – historians who contributed to this
symposium of Anti-Buchananiana. It is only to note that the
same technique is utilized throughout: the alternation of
the words "Hitler" and "Buchanan", after
a while, has a distinctly hypnotic effect.
THE
SMALL MATTER OF AN OCEAN
This
crude political Mesmerism is spiced up with some "historical"
analysis: a silly article – there is no other word for
it – claiming that Hitler had in motion "secret"
German plans to build "super-battleships" (whatever
they are!) which would soon descend in droves on American
shores. The authors are reduced to dragging out old stories
originally planted by British intelligence operatives (see
Thomas E. Mahl's Desperate
Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States,
1939-44) to the effect that the Nazis planned a massive
invasion of South America – from Dakar, in Northern Africa,
to Brazil. But if Hitler could not even launch an attack across
the English Channel, how in the name of Haman could he have
undertaken the far more formidable leap across the Atlantic
Ocean?
THE
HISTORIAN AS THEOLOGIAN
True
believers in the mystique of State Power, the distinguished
panel of nobodies assembled by the editors of TomPaine.com
ascribe to Hitler virtually superhuman abilities: he is described
as "giving the order" to build a huge armada –
but is it really necessary to point out that "giving
the order" is not the same as having it carried out?.
Wishing doesn't make it so. Hitler has been dead for over
half a century. Yet such was the power and scope of his megalomania
that it seems to have outlived him, and convinced those who
have made him of him a secular Satan – in the sense that
they believe his powers were almost unlimited. We leave, here,
the subject of history, and enter the realm of theology: for
this is really the essential nature of the demonization process,
as an aspect of secularized religion, complete with mass hysteria
and public denunciations of the heretic.
ALL
THAT MONEY!
This
entire company of mediocre academics and subsidized publicists
does a really pathetic job, for all their sound and fury –
and all their fat funding from "The Florence Fund,"
whose other charitable tax-exempt activities include support
for National Public Radio and The American Prospect,
the chief theoretical journal of Clintonized liberalism. Do
you have any idea how much a quarter page ad in the New
York Times costs? Last time I checked, it was over $70,000
– a nice chunk of cash even in these high-flying times.
The joke is that, for the money, this hatchet job is strictly
third and even fourth-rate. If I were The Florence Fund, I
would demand a refund.
A
FLY IN THE OINTMENT
Ah,
but there is irony in this incident, too delicious to pass
up. For one contribution to this Hate Buchanan symposium really
answers the venomous smear that disfigured the august
pages of the New York Times yesterday morning, and
flatly contradicts the rabid tone of the ad: Alexander DeConde,
emeritus professor of history at the University of California
at Santa Barbara, and author of A
History of American Foreign Policy – a source
cited in Buchanan's book – gives an interesting and eminently
fair (if somewhat stodgy) appraisal of A Republic, Not
an Empire. DeConde reveals that he was given the book
to read and critique before publication, and he summarizes
his generally judicious remarks without any of the rancor
that permeates the rest of TomPaine.com. While disagreeing
with Buchanan's central thesis, that we should not have intervened
(although he never actually says this, it is implicit in his
critique) and taking issue with several points (such as Buchanan's
concept of the relationship between Manifest Destiny and overseas
imperialism – Professor DeConde provides the best retort
to whatever primitive hack wrote that hysterical ad copy,
and I quote:
"On
the other hand, I believe Buchanan's concerns over what he
terms "benevolent global hegemony" (p. 360) have
a substantive basis and merit being brought up as campaign
issues. Also, his complaint that his opponents' use of isolationist
as a "term of abuse intended to silence an adversary,
end an argument, and stifle debate" strikes me as plausible
(p. 48). He has studied history, thought about it seriously,
written a wide-ranging book on his own without a ghostwriter,
and has defended his perspective on foreign policy in detail.
This has not been an easy task. We need not accept any of
his ideas at face value but we should criticize and debate
them openly rather than dismiss them by epithet."
Amen.
RETRO-POLITICS
But
political discourse in our degenerate era is almost entirely
reduced to a series of epithets, which are an integral part
of the ideology of political correctness. The witch-hunts,
the slack-jawed conformism, the lockstep mentality seem like
a farcical reenactment of some liberals' idea of what the
fifties were like – only, this time, on an international
scale. In the current atmosphere prevailing in the West, anything
and anyone that deviates from the socialist and internationalist
agenda of the Third Way is fair game. Nothing makes this clearer
than the hue and cry over Joerg Haider and the rise of the
Freedom
Party of Austria (FPO).
IN
DEFENSE OF
THE FREEDOM PARTY
The
Financial Times of London could hardly contain its
alarm, while Israel's
Justice Minister called the results "terrible."
The editorial rabble-rousers of the Left, and their "right"-wing
echo chamber, would have us believe that the modern equivalent
of Hitler's Brownshirts are on the march in Vienna. But it
just ain't so. The Freedom Party's program, far from embracing
the national socialism that is after all the bastard child
of the Left, is a libertarian party of the Right: indeed,
it vies with our own Libertarian Party, right here in the
US, in the degree of its ideological purity. According to
Hans Georg Betz's Radical
Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (St. Martin's
Press, 1994) Haider and the FPO stand for a "fundamental
liberalism" predicated on "the promotion of individual
freedom and a strong emphasis on individual abilities and
preferences." Individualism, entrepreneurship, and the
idea of liberty as against the egalitarian concept of freedom
promoted by the French Revolution, this is the credo of the
FPO: what is "fascist" about that? This is
precisely the opposite of fascism, and that is the
economic program of classical (or market) liberalism: in short,
Haider and his colleagues are libertarians, albeit not in
the sense that Jesse Ventura is often described in the media.
Betz describes the program of the party as "economic
decentralization, privatization, deregulation, tax reform,
and incentives." Some "National Socialists"!
A
DEATHLESS CANARD
Virtually
every story about Haider opens with a description of
him as the man "who once praised Hitler's employment
policies." This canard has followed him for years, but
the origin of it is revealing. What happened is that, during
the course of a parliamentary debate, Haider advanced one
of the central demands of the FPO: that people on the dole
who refused to take a job and were shown to be capable of
working be faced with sanctions. The FPO, he declared, would
not stand by idly while the indigent relaxed on "the hammock
of the welfare state." The socialists, shocked by this
frontal assault on the privileged status of indigents,resorted
to their crudest and bluntest weapon: why, they cried, such
a policy would be a return to the policies of the Third Reich!
Overcome by such hypocrisy. the intemperate Haider replied
that, unlike the Social Democrats, the Nazis had actually
increased employment – a fact so politically incorrect
that he was forced to resign as governor of Carinthia. He
was later reelected, and his popularity continues to surge.
Why do they hate him?
HAIDER
VERSUS THE AUSTRIAN NOMENKLATURA
For
two reasons. First, he is challenging the socialist nomenklatura
that controls the Austrian economy. Under the present system,
is it impossible to get a job in any of the essential professions,
or to even get a business license, without having a "party
card" – that is, membership in one of the two ruling
parties that have looted the country in coalition since the
end of World War II. It is as if the Democratic and Republican
parties had instituted a virtual political monopoly –
as unlikely as that sounds – with the added proviso that
you had to join and contribute in order to be able to work.
HAIDER
THE HERO
But
how could prosperous and peaceful Austria be incubating a
neo-Nazi movement, the pundits ponder? The answer is that
Austria's system of State-sanctioned privileges is, today,
far closer to the Third Reich than most realize: the name
of the party in power has changed, since the end of World
War II, but the politicization of everyday life that is the
chief feature of totalitarian regimes is, in Austria, very
much the same. While an ostensibly free press is reasonably
vigorous, and elections are routinely held, the iron grip
of the ruling parties on the people's economic lifeblood is
firmly in place. This is the real reason for Haider's victories:
he is a hero to every decent person in Austria. It is as simple
as that.
REBELS
AGAINST THE EURO-STATE
But
this does not explain the vehemence of the international reaction
to the Freedom Party's victory, the hysterical "fascist"-baiting
and outright lies being perpetrated in the name of journalism.
In Europe, at least, much of it is due to the FPO's opposition
to subsuming Austrian sovereignty under the rubric of the
European Union. The FPO denounces the idea of a single European
entity as a nightmarish vision of "a super-centralized
state, a bureaucratized Moloch without democratic legitimization,"
as Betz describes it. Sounds about right to me, but
this is a no-no in Europe's elite circles, and they
have unleashed their pet journalists on the hapless Haider,
who was moved to declare somewhat sheepishly that the results
of the election were "not a swing to the right but a
swing to justice."
YOU
JUST CAN'T WIN
Poor
Haider: during his sojourn at Harvard University he went out
of his way to have his photo taken in multicultural company,
and he constantly touts the fact that the FPO has plenty of
Jewish leaders, in the vain hope that he will somehow appease
his critics. What he doesn't yet seem to understand is that
he will never appease them, except by disappearing
– along with all vestiges of nationalism, particularism,
decentralism, and dissent – from the face of the earth.
GO,
JOERG, GO!
To
my friends and fellow libertarians in the Freedom Party of
Austria, I can only say this: never mind trying to kowtow
before your enemies: they are unappeasable. Don't bother genuflecting
before the idols of political correctness: they'll only add
blasphemy to all the other charges. Just say what is, and
speak truth to power. For my part, and from my vantagepoint,
I can only root for the good guys from a considerable distance:
but, for what it's worth, at least some in the West are not
speaking from complete (and often willful) ignorance. And
so, I say: Go, Joerg, go!
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